Ask Anne Chester™: Therapy Talks

When the Past Won't Let Go: A Deep Dive into Trauma Healing

• Anne Chester, LCSW • Episode 4

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 What Is Trauma And How Do You Treat It?

Trauma leaves an imprint that goes far beyond the event itself, embedding itself in our bodies and minds in ways that can seem mysterious or even frustrating. Licensed clinical social worker Anne Chester discussed this complex topic, revealing how trauma actually works in our neurobiology and why so many of us struggle to "just get over it."

The conversation distinguishes between what therapists call "big T trauma" – those life-altering, clearly identifiable events like accidents or violence – and the more insidious "little t trauma" that accumulates through persistent negative experiences that chip away at our sense of safety and self-worth. Anne explains how our nervous system processes (or fails to process) these experiences, leaving memories stuck in a way that continues to affect us years later.

Most powerfully, Anne shares her own experience with trauma, recounting a disturbing incident on a school field trip that affected her for decades before she connected it to her anxiety about public places. Through this personal story, she demonstrates why validation is so crucial to healing – acknowledging that an experience was genuinely difficult rather than dismissing its impact. She explains how treatments like EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing) can help the brain properly file these stuck memories, allowing people to move forward without carrying the burden of past experiences.

Whether you're struggling with your own trauma, supporting someone who is, or simply want to better understand this fundamental aspect of mental health, this episode offers clarity, compassion, and hope. The message throughout is clear: trauma may be complex, but healing is possible. Listen now and discover why Anne believes that when it comes to the pain of your past, "it doesn't have to be that way."

To learn more about Anne Chester™, LCSW Counseling visit:
https://www.AnneChester.com
Anne Chester™, LCSW Counseling
122 River Oaks Drive
Southlake, Texas 76092
817-939-7884

Speaker 1:

You're listening to Ask Ann Chester. Therapy Talks, the podcast where life's tough moments meet real talk, a little humor and the expertise of Ann Chester, licensed clinical social worker. Ann helps Texan women in the middle of life navigate anxiety, depression and trauma with compassion and a no-nonsense edge. If you've ever thought there's got to be a better way, you're in the right place. And good news, you can schedule a free 15-minute consultation with Ann because, as she says, it doesn't have to be that way. Now let's dive in.

Speaker 2:

Trauma isn't just about what happened. It's about how it lives in the body and mind. Ann Chester breaks down what trauma really is, how it shows up and the tools she uses to help clients heal and ultimately move forward. Welcome back everyone. I'm Sophia Yvette, co-host and producer, back in the studio with Ann Chester, licensed clinical social worker. Ann, how's it going? It's going well. How are you, sophia? I am great, it is so great to be sitting with you again now, and this is a foundational topic for so many people. What is trauma and how do you treat it?

Speaker 3:

I love that question. Trauma is actually a specialty of mine and the thing that I love about treating trauma is so often it has a big hope element. If I can treat the trauma and you can move forward unburdened. It's not something that necessarily hangs on to you lifelong and there are really good trauma treatments out there. So trauma is essentially an experience we have in life that doesn't get filed correctly in our brain. It overwhelms our nervous system and the memory, the images a lot of times just the metaphors and what it meant to you get stuck in your brain.

Speaker 2:

Now, how do you define trauma in a clinical setting versus how most people understand it?

Speaker 3:

So when you asked me that question, my mind immediately goes to teenagers that come into therapy. Or maybe it's my own kids or my kids' friends that talk to me about I had the worst day ever. I hated my math class and I spilled ketchup on my shirt at lunch, and I'm so traumatized. So that's more in the catastrophizing category. It's what we hear our kids do. That's not trauma. You just had a bad day and tomorrow is a new day, right?

Speaker 3:

Trauma really has to do with an experience, and there's two kinds of trauma. There's big T trauma and little t trauma. It's an experience that overwhelms us, that overwhelms the fight or flight system in our brain. So a big T trauma is the easiest one to understand and the easiest thing to treat in my office, because that's I watched my friend die in a car accident or I watched someone die in die on the battlefield. You see a lot of that with military personnel. Small T trauma are just everyday things that happen over time, that we never necessarily have time to process, but they do overwhelm our nervous systems. Maybe it's a bully, a bully at work, a bully you dealt with in high school, and so then when you go to respond to a boss that somehow subconsciously remind you of that bully, you go back to a really defensive or scared posture. But the small T traumas are the ongoing things that just tend to chip away at our feelings of safety, trust and self-worth.

Speaker 2:

Now, what are some common symptoms or behaviors that indicate unresolved trauma?

Speaker 3:

So big T trauma is really classic. What we hear about people that have nightmares, that have flashbacks. So a flashback is I'm sitting there and all of a sudden I have a memory of what happened. That can be a full blown I completely am back on the battlefield or I'm driving to my car past a place where I had a car accident and I just remember that. But it also can be a body memory.

Speaker 3:

I'm talking about something that makes me uncomfortable, that connects with something else and I get a headache all of a sudden, or I just feel flooded or I have a panic attack. So those are kind of our more classic symptoms. A lot of it has to do with our ability to sleep. Pain in the body. They're really just things that sometimes you don't even put your finger on. When they're not classic not the classic panic attacks, social phobias, nightmares, flashbacks they're the little things where we just get scared and freeze in a situation we don't know why, or we're scared to go to the mall at two o'clock in the afternoon because we're scared of having that panic attack. So those are like the subtle symptoms of trauma. Another one that I often see that makes me really sad is that mentality of people just need to get over it. So it's almost like a loss of empathy or a loss of patience. But I've also seen it on the other end, where it's too much empathy and you cry at every Hallmark movie.

Speaker 2:

Understood. Now real question for you and can trauma be caused by things that don't seem big enough to others?

Speaker 3:

Absolutely, absolutely Trauma we all are familiar with. Like you have a bully in school and how that can cause PTSD in adult years and problems functioning in the workplace. But if you just kind of get picked on and gaslit as a kid and it's normal to you kids don't know what's normal and what's not normal. It's just normal to be treated in that way that can create a small T trauma in our body. There are other things.

Speaker 3:

Maybe one of the things I see a lot are people that have just an overwhelming anxiety of school shootings or public shootings, because it's been in the media so much and we've seen an increase of school shootings across this country, so there's a real anxiety that's going to happen to me. Is that unfounded? A lot of times, no, but a lot of times yes. So maybe you go overboard to have this safety plan because you don't feel safe. So you weren't directly impacted by a school shooting yourself, but you've seen it enough and heard it and it's something that impacts and affects your daily life and overwhelms you. Maybe you even have dreams about it. Maybe you're making plans on how to keep your own kids safe.

Speaker 2:

So, yes, how do you help clients feel safe enough to begin that healing process once you've identified that there is a big T trauma, for example?

Speaker 3:

Or even a small T trauma. Therapy is a really overwhelming process. You're coming to talk to a stranger about really personal things and typically as therapists we share very little back with you about our lives. So yeah, therapy is scary. I like to really work with my patients on grounding in the office. You know there's very basic grounding skills that so many of us have heard of, that just popular psychology. What are five things you can see? What are things you can hear, what are things you can touch? But another way is just validating the perspective. A lot of times the small T traumas get bigger because people tell someone oh, that experience wasn't that bad, or I've had an experience like that, or oh, oh, I see you're just being dramatic so kind of those statements that are dismissive of an experience. So in therapy I work really hard to help a person be able to share their experience and not dismiss it, and validate that what they experienced was really hard.

Speaker 2:

Why is validating that?

Speaker 3:

experience so important to the healing process. Well, for one thing, when we've had a trauma, a lot of times we just don't validate it for ourselves. You know, we don't validate the impact it had on us. I always like to give this example to clients because it is a good example, and I did use EMDR eye movement, desensitization and reprocessing for this experience.

Speaker 3:

When I was in eighth grade, I went on a school field trip. We traveled to Washington DC and we were touring the Grand Central Post Office and we rounded a corner and there was a man laying on the floor with blood around his body and obviously our teachers and the chaperones with us very quickly shuffled us out of that space and I remember very clearly looking over to my right and seeing an ambulance and emergency workers coming in to help the guy. I clearly remember that I didn't realize, probably till my 30s. That was an incident that was stuck in my brain and that I had anxiety about going in public places and not understanding what had happened. One of the big emotions I had with that, which is common for trauma patients, is confusion, because we didn't have an explanation of what happened, and one thing that happens with trauma is we tend to filter things through our own life experiences.

Speaker 3:

So one of the girls that was on the field trip with us, her mom, had a brain aneurysm and had died. So when she saw that person she processed it as a brain aneurysm. We don't know what happened to that man. Nobody ever told us. I just remember seeing the emergency workers. She never did so giving our space to validate that. That experience was hard. That was a really crazy experience for me and you know I was told well, it wasn't that big of a deal because it didn't happen to you and they got you out of there and you didn't see that. No, it's a big deal to see a man laying on the floor with blood coming out of his body Just is. And I did the EMDR treatment and reprocess that memory and I don't have those same anxieties about going out in public.

Speaker 2:

Wow. Well, that's wonderful. Thank you so much for sharing your own story with us and delivering those very important insights when it comes to trauma today. We'll see you next time on Ask Ann Chester Therapy Talks.

Speaker 3:

Thanks, sophia, and if you like what you heard today, be sure, and like my podcast, I look forward to future episodes.

Speaker 1:

Thanks for tuning in to Ask Ann Chester Therapy Talks. If today's episode hit home and you live in Texas, you can schedule a free 15-minute consultation with Ann at annchestercom or just give her a call at 817-939-7884. Let's start the conversation, because it doesn't have to be that way. Until next time, take care.